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How a $5 Donation Can Prevent a Child from Dying - Today
Imagine this. Somewhere in northern Nigeria, a child is struggling to breathe. She has contracted malaria — a disease that kills nearly half a million children each year. Her mother has no formal education, no access to a hospital, and only enough money to buy food — barely. But somewhere else, far away, you have $5 you were about to spend on an iced coffee, or a tip, or a ride-share you didn’t really need. That $5 could pay for a long-lasting insecticide-treated bed net, or a course of anti-malarial medication. In other words, your $5 can literally prevent her death — today.
This isn’t speculation, and it isn’t charity in the sentimental sense. It’s a direct, measurable, and ethical opportunity to save a human life. It may be one of the rare moments in which the phrase “every dollar counts” isn’t a slogan. It’s a moral fact.
The Ethical Simplicity of Saving a Life
Most of us agree that if we can prevent something very bad from happening — without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance — we ought to do it. This is not a radical principle. It’s the foundation of all reasonable moral thinking. It’s what drives us to run toward a drowning child in a shallow pond, even if it means ruining our new shoes. The cost of the shoes is trivial compared to the cost of a child’s life.
This is the foundation for my argument — one I’ve made consistently for decades — that when we spend on luxuries while children are dying of preventable diseases, we are failing a basic moral test. If a small amount of money — $5, in this case — can prevent a death, then not donating it becomes morally significant.
What Can $5 Actually Do?
Let’s move from philosophy to data. According to GiveWell, an independent charity evaluator, one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives is through malaria prevention. Here’s how:
- $5 can purchase and distribute an insecticide-treated bed net that protects two children for up to three years.
- It can also fund seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) for one child — a simple medication given at critical intervals that dramatically reduces the risk of infection during peak seasons.
- Alternatively, $5 can pay for oral rehydration therapy, zinc supplementation, or Vitamin A, all of which are life-saving treatments for common causes of child mortality, including diarrhea and nutritional deficiency.
These are not minor interventions. They are globally recognized public health essentials, and they are backed by decades of research and cost-effectiveness analysis.
When you donate $5 to an organization like the Against Malaria Foundation or Malaria Consortium, your money is not lost in bureaucracy. It is directed toward a proven method of saving a child’s life — often today, sometimes tomorrow, but always urgently.
Why the Moral Weight Falls on You
You might say, “It’s only $5. Surely, the world’s problems can’t hinge on such a small sum.” But this is precisely the point. When so many deaths are preventable at such a low cost, and when we possess the means, the responsibility becomes inescapable.
You may believe that governments should handle this, or that billionaires should solve global poverty. Perhaps they should. But until they do — and they haven’t — the ethical responsibility rests with you and me. We can act. Therefore, we must.
You might not feel responsible for a child dying halfway across the world. But what would you say to their mother, if she knew that somewhere in a more affluent country, a stranger could have saved her child — and chose not to?
To have the power to prevent suffering and not use it, when the personal cost is trivial, is not a morally neutral position. It is a moral failure.
The Psychological Distance That Kills
One of the reasons we don’t act is distance — emotional and geographic. We are wired to care more for those close to us, to whom we can attach faces and names. The child in Uganda remains nameless. The child in our neighborhood has a birthday party.
But the value of a child’s life does not decrease with distance. If we saw a child dying on our doorstep and could save her with a $5 note, most of us would do so without hesitation. The difference is not moral — it is psychological.
And yet, our psychology cannot be our guide. Ethics requires that we think beyond instinct, beyond tribe, and beyond what feels immediate. Ethics asks: What is the right thing to do, regardless of how close we feel to the victim?
The Myth of Futility
Some say, “I’m just one person. What difference can I make?” This is an illusion — and a dangerous one. You don’t have to fix the entire world. You only have to save one life to make an immeasurable difference to that one person.
If your $5 prevents a child’s death, is that not enough?
Even if your donation only reduces the probability of death by 1 in 1,000 — statistically, if a thousand people did the same, one child would live. And you were part of that. That, too, is ethically significant.
We must reject the myth that small donations are drops in an ocean. They are not. When pooled with others, they become rivers of survival.
But Shouldn’t I Focus on Local Problems?
This objection is common. And yes, there are serious issues in every community. But ethics is about effectiveness, not only proximity. And the uncomfortable truth is that your dollar goes further overseas.
This is not a matter of sentiment. It is a matter of impact.
- In high-income countries, $5 may fund a pamphlet on child health.
- In low-income countries, $5 can directly save a child’s life.
To focus exclusively on helping those near you, when you could save more lives further away, is morally akin to helping one person out of a burning house when you could have saved five in another room — and you knew it.
The Opportunity You Can Seize — Today
We must reframe what it means to do good. Donation is not seasonal. It is not a luxury. It is the most direct and reliable way to live ethically in a world of inequality.
You don’t need to change careers. You don’t need to be a saint. You don’t even need to give all you have. But you can give something, and for many, that something could be $5 — today.
This donation, though small in your life, could be the most important event in someone else’s.
The Real Cost of Inaction
What happens if you don’t donate that $5? Perhaps nothing visible. But elsewhere, quietly and without ceremony, a child may die who didn’t have to.
Ethics isn’t about how we feel. It’s about what we do. And when the stakes are this high — life or death — our excuses begin to sound hollow.
You have the means. You have the knowledge. And now, you have the opportunity.
A $5 donation can prevent a child from dying — today. What will you do?